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Salad

Potato Souffle

A salad of boiled potatoes, bacon, onion, mayonnaise, and vinegar, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes in their skins, then peel and slice them while hot.

  2. Cut the bacon into dice and fry until browned, then drain the fat.

Combine and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the sliced potatoes, bacon, and onion.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the mayonnaise and vinegar. Mix carefully to avoid breaking the potatoes.

  3. Serve in a salad bowl, garnished with parsley.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the dish; their starch gives a soft, tender texture when handled gently.
Bacon
Adds savory, browned fat and salt-rich flavor throughout the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the potato slices and carries flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the mayonnaise and bacon.

The step that matters

Mix carefully to avoid breaking the potatoes. Hot, freshly sliced potatoes are fragile and their cell walls break under vigorous stirring, turning slices mushy. Gentle folding keeps the pieces intact and the texture pleasant.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, vinegar, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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